


runnin' down to the riptide

by craftingdead



Series: charlie will make cd a common tag if it kills them [9]
Category: The Crafting Dead
Genre: Character Study, Eating Disorders, M/M, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 07:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15359607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/pseuds/craftingdead
Summary: The days go by.





	runnin' down to the riptide

**Author's Note:**

> MIND THE TAGS. It's not as bad as I make it out to be in my head/the tags make it out to be but just in case. dont want anyone getting hurt/triggered  
> riptide - vance joy

There are good days and there are...less good days.

On the good days, you can find Nick and Ghetto messing around in the kitchen, early in the morning as soft music from the CD player Uni had managed to hook up playing in the background. Sometimes, it is romantic. Sometimes it’s “Ms. New Booty” played on loop for several hours—it depends

Those days you can find them cooking. Well, attempting to, at least. They couldn’t make a proper breakfast if God herself came down and blessed them with eternal amazing cooking skills. But they do know how to bake. Neither of them can cook like Shark does, but Nick can whip up some mean brownies when he feels like it. But, it couldn’t be done without Ghetto taste-testing and dumping ungodly amounts of chocolate chips into the batter, when they have the supplies to do it.

On good days they’re with each other. Going on raids together and watching each other's back for walkers; wrapped up in each other and taking an evening snooze that they _rightfully earned_ , Gray; kissing in some closet and getting busted by AK or Shelby.

They talk about their future, about the end of the apocalypse, about curing the disease, about them. Ghetto humors a small barn in the countryside while Nick goes on about a large cabin in the woods, next to a lake or something. They know there’s a very high chance neither of them will make it out of this alive, but it’s fun to imagine. It’s fun to dream.

“Nick?” Ghetto would call over, turning around to look at his boyfriend. “Come look at this."

And when Nick would arrive, Ghetto would be holding an open book with one hand, the other resting inside of the pages in the shape of a middle finger resting between the pages. Nick would lightly shove him, and the book would fall to the ground, forgotten in all the chaos of laughing and love.

Until Ghetto wakes up one day with chills, a stuffy nose and a voice that could wake the dead.

The uncomfortable hotness in him, the chills that pass over him every once and a while, the fatigue—it kills Ghetto. It reminds him so fucking much of getting bit, and the hours that passed afterward, not being able to get comfortable because of the heat, shivering violently during the daytime hours when the sun shone with all its glory onto the group, the way he nearly blacked out standing up

That morning, when he wakes up, he can’t even look at Nick. Can’t joke with him about how raspy his voice is, and doesn’t respond when he leans over and softly asks if Ghetto is alright.

Nick ends up asking the Professor if anything's wrong, if Ghetto’s alright, but gets brushed off with a shrug and a simple answer of “It’s a twenty-four-hour thing that’s been passing through the CDC, nothing to worry about.” Still, Nick convinces Shark to make some soup for Ghetto, who’d been absolutely miserable and holds his hand through the rest of the day.

That night, when Nick and Ghetto were tucked into bed and Nick was fast asleep, Ghetto was terrified. He was terrified of turning in the middle of the night and attacking his love, despite being reassured that it was in fact just a cold. Still, the night was so, so long to him.

When he woke up the next morning, feeling better and thankfully, still human, it was wonderful. Nick, next to him, however, was groggy and feverish. Ghetto snorted quietly, climbed out of bed and went to get some more blankets for his boyfriend.

That turned into one of the better days, with Nick rambling in a feverish haze (“I'm not feeling so good, Mr. Stark.”) and Ghetto stroking his hair and getting more blankets whenever necessary.

But Ghetto has other not-so-good days as well. Some might even classify them as bad days. Ghetto sure as hell would.

They usually start out the same. A nightmare or a blinding headache would rouse him from sleep, Nick either there sleeping peacefully or gone, and hunger burning in his stomach. He knows it’s from not eating in several hours, due to sleep, but it still disorients him in the early hours of the morning when he is half-asleep and unaware.

Second, someone mentions Red or Ross. Just their names usually are enough to put Ghetto in a shitty mood, and the added annoyance from the nightmare (or headache) results in him having a bad, angry morning. It showed.

Third, that anger festers throughout the day and by the time he gets put on guard duty or sent out on a raid he’s fuming. Taking out his anger on every walker—and wall that just so happens to be in his way—turns out being the end result and someone has to shake him out of it. Usually, Nick or AK, as they were the more reasonable side of the group, though Jess, Shelby, and Uni had helped him out of it a few times.

(More than one time, on particularly bad days, Nick's had to bring him down from his stupid anger high. Stopping him from punching a wall or throwing himself at walkers for a fight, for anything to get his anger out. He would cup his face with his hands and murmur, "It's going to be alright." Even if it didn't help.)

By the end of the day he’s exhausted and worn out, physically and mentally, but those days are few and far between, thankfully. And Nick being there to hold like the best-damned stuff animal ever doesn’t hurt, either.

Nick is always there to help Ghetto when he has a bad day, and Ghetto would wish to say it was the same for him but that wasn’t always the case. Nick’s bad days were...different than his, to say the least.

There are days when Nick goes to reach for a granola bar or a piece of fruit or something, gets called away and completely forgets about it and _oops!_ there goes another week without food. Quite a shame, isn’t it?

Remembering to eat, or do anything relatively healthy for himself is a problem for Nick. Too focused on his friends and group to care for himself, as usual. Too worried about other people's’ problems to care for his own. Too dependant on other people to remind him to eat, to snap him out of a zoned-out state with barely hidden concern on their faces.

But there are other days as well.

Days where Nick goes to grab something to eat, gets it without interruption, and just. Can’t eat it. He doesn’t know why or how, but he can’t. He spends minutes, hours turning the object over in his hand, the hunger growling in his stomach pushed to the back of his mind. He just _can’t do it_ , no matter how hard he tries, he _can’t_.

These usually end up going in three different directions. One, he ends up putting the food back for someone else or to try again later; two, he hides it somewhere in his room, too ashamed to walk back to the kitchen and risk someone else seeing what he was doing; and three, taking one look at the piece of whatever-the-fuck they had raided from stores and houses in Atlanta and throws it against the wall as hard as possible. And so the cycle continues.

It had turned into a nasty habit for Nick, one he can’t get rid of. He didn’t know why or how it was happening (as mentioned before), so he just didn’t do anything about it. He just didn’t eat.

Until Ghetto pressed his hands against Nick’s sides and felt how skinny he had become, how thin and fragile Nick truly was underneath the sweaters and scarves he wears, as delicate as a flower.

But he didn’t pressure him or anything. Ghetto just stood to the side and was there to help encourage Nick on bad days and hold his hand on worse days. He didn’t fully understand, seeing as his relationship with food was completely different, but he was there for Nick when Nick wasn’t all the way _there_.

But that’s a whole different problem, on whole different days.

Similar to Ghetto’s, it starts in the morning. But, unlike Ghetto’s, it doesn’t start with a headache or nightmare or anything like that. It starts like a normal day, things going on, as usual, places to go, people to meet, the gist of that except for that Nick isn’t really...there.

He’ll softly agree with answers, zoning out into nothingness until someone waves their hand over his face. Then he’ll pretend nothing happened and go the day like that. This happens more than Nick would ever like to admit.

And then there are the...other days. The days where Nick wakes up, dissociates throughout the entire day until someone says something and he just...snaps. It could be anything from Red and his army to reminders of the apocalypse and zombies to even the _slightest_ implication or mention of amnesia or being taken advantage of and suddenly he’s not in the room; instead, he’s in a CDC closet hyperventilating.

He can hear people yelling and Nick knows that they’re looking for him but all he can feel is the sensation of nails and teeth digging into skin; his heart burning in his chest as blood spills out onto the floor.

And then there’s Ghetto, holding him with that good _good_ touch and not the bad type, cliche as it might sound. There’s Ghetto to pick him up in those strong arms (swoon!) and carry him back to their room, leaving only to tell Gray that he was taking the next day or two off. There’s Ghetto to comfort him during the night when Nick wakes up, sweating and panting from nightmares he can’t name.

But he’s always got Ghetto for those nights, even if he can’t talk about what happened to him. And Ghetto’s got him, for the days where the anger is just too much to handle and the fact that Jordan is dead and gone drives him insane.

But they got each other. And when the days get tough and the nights get long, they have each other. And that’s the best thing, for now.


End file.
